Recently, improved performance is increasingly required for plastics and thus a number of resins of various new abilities have been developed and marketed. Among them, much attention is centered on optically anisotropic liquid crystalline resins characterized by the parallel arrangement of molecular chains because of their excellent fluidity, heat resistance, mechanical properties and dimensional stability, and they are increasingly used in precision molded products such as micro connectors.
Particularly in components such as camera modules, for holding optical lenses, there is a need for further miniaturization and improvement of overall accuracy by exploiting the dimensional stability and fluidity of a liquid crystalline resin composition, which is studied much (for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2010-106165). In JP '165, blending silica particles having an average particle diameter of not more than 5 μm with a liquid crystalline polyester resin prevents dust formation due to fibrillation on the surface of a component such as a camera module, comprising a lens holding element and made from the liquid crystalline polyester resin that may occur while the component is dusted off by ultrasonic cleaning.
Recently, driving mechanisms for zooming, focusing, anti-shake image stabilization and the like are increasingly provided to camera module components, and elements of the driving mechanisms may slide together or crash together with a certain impact. Dust formation due to desorption of particles from the surface of the elements, which is caused by the sliding motion and/or the crash with a certain impact, is emerging as a problem. However, dust formation is not sufficiently controlled with the method described in JP '165. Moreover, in some cases the resin has been replaced by a tougher resin allowing smoother sliding motion and providing high impact resistance such as nylon resins to solve the problem of dust formation due to desorption of particles from the surface of the elements, but nylon resins have had a problem of large dimensional changes caused by water absorption. It could therefore be helpful to provide a liquid crystalline resin composition for use in camera modules exhibiting excellent low dust forming property, toughness and impact strength, and a molded product made therefrom for use in the camera modules.